This is obviously sarcasm: Right behind all the positive racial healing we've seen during Barack Obama's presidency is the vast improvement in the degree of civility heard and seen in leftist discourse.

Obviously, that's not so. Hillary Clinton calls GOP presidential candidates "terrorists" and invokes Nazi-era images of illegal immigrants being "loaded into boxcars." The press — which would treat either utterance as front-page news if said by a Republican or conservative — gives her a pass, and some of its members are virtually cheering her on. Barack Obama calls his opponents "crazies," arguably even including some Democrats on matters on the Iran "deal," aka the "orchestrated surrender to Iran's nuclear ambitions." Former Bill Clinton administration and current Hillary Clinton insider Paul Begala joined the parade today as he attacked Dick Cheney:

In mid-July, as Connor Williams at NewsBusters reported, Begala also called Cheney a "sociopath":

(Begala said,) Well, either he's a secret plant from my party, reminding people of an administration that they hated. When he left office Dick Cheney's favorable was 13 percent. There are forms of venereal disease that are higher in the polls than 13%.”

After (CNN host Kate) Bolduan implored Begala to “stop it,” the former Clinton White House advisor kept his rant going in spite of her pleas: “So, that's one option. Or, which I think is much more likely, he's a sociopath. Good lord...the most damaging, destructive vice presidency since Aaron Burr shot and killed Alexander Hamilton 210 years ago.”

The CNN contributor was unwilling to back down at all from his statement, despite the reaction from the rest of the panel.

It would appear that his fellow Democrats have expressed no public or private disappointment in Begala's outrageous statements and behavior during the past six weeks. If they had, I don't think he would have gone to the well again.

A "sociopath" is "a person with a psychopathic personality whose behavior is antisocial, often criminal, and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience."

Hmm. Based on that definition, it seems that Begala would have far better luck finding a genuine sociopath if he went down the hall and knocked on the door of the (still, for the time being, but it looks like she's fading) 2016 Democratic presidential frontrunner, or visited the other half of the "two for the price of one" couple at their home in Chappaqua.